Realtime Worlds announces MyWorld but what is it?

Realtime Worlds snuck an announcement in tonight for a new venture that they’re calling “Project: MyWorld.” According to the above trailer, it takes a 3D recreation of planet Earth and combines it with gaming and social media to do… something.

Perhaps the concept is just too vast for my tiny brain to comprehend. The game shows elements of world construction, but I thought the world was already built. How would changes to structures in the virtual environment affect other players? And what’s with buying Buckingham Palace? Something tells me the contract for such a thing would be ridiculous, possibly containing more lines than the code used to create Project: MyWorld.

This is another one of those things which seems to not be built with me, as a hardcore gamer, in mind. I don’t want to draw comparisons to PlayStation Home here but it’s a little bit difficult not to. The odds of my participating in something like this for more than five minutes, based solely on what I’ve seen here, is unlikely. Then again, I would have said the same thing about FrontierVille and that’s kept my attention for a while (admittedly, it’s waning). Perhaps some more information may change that perspective.

What about you? Do you need another virtual world to play in with all of the people in your real one? And what would you like to be able to do in such a place?